Straight talk …

… The Case For Moving On by John H. McWhorter, City Journal 11 July 2014. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I fail to see in the conversation about conversation anything resembling what our greatest civil rights leaders tried so hard to inculcate: black pride. I am deeply committed to forging change for black people, especially poor ones. I salute the crumbling of the War on Drugs; I cheer Senators Corey Booker and Ron Paul for their recent commitment to prisoner reentry policy; I will continue to argue for educational strategies that actually work for poor (black) kids. But I reject the idea that none of this change truly matters until America achieves an elevated degree of moral sophistication about black people’s past, present, and future—and that this enlightenment, once attained, would somehow create unprecedentedly rapid and effective policy changes. I further submit that the call for this all-encompassing awareness constitutes an unintended diminishment of black people. I cringe under the implication that we, and only we, need such exquisitely calibrated treatment in order to succeed under less than perfect conditions.